The Parting Gift

When Craig and I lived in New York we had the opportunity to go to several four-star restaurants.  One detail– aside from champagne while you waited for the rest of your party to arrive, a purse bench,  having your tea leaves snipped right off the plant table side before it was brewed, and a confections cart at the end of the meal– was the small parting gift that was given on your way out of the restaurant. 

This past weekend, Craig created a five-course tasting menu for some friends, and I was inspired to make a parting gift that they could take home with them after the meal.  At first I planned to make canelé, but it was Sunday and you can't buy liquor on Sundays in NC. Unfortunately, we didn't have the rum we needed for the recipe. I opted to make chocolate macaron with a chocolate ganache filling instead. A number of years ago, when we still lived in NYC, I made rose-water macarons with my friend Samantha. That was the one and only time I successfully made macarons– this time I was determined to make it work.

On Sunday afternoon, I went to Craig's catering kitchen and made them all by myself with a little over-the-shoulder supervision and pointers from Craig– and only one tiff about the definition of "test batch".   I'm embarrassed to say that it took me four hours to make a recipe that says it should take 1-1/2 to 2-1/2 hours. In my defense, though, I was taking special care to make sure I was doing every step perfectly. Also, it took some time to make sure the oven was staying at the correct temperature. In the end, the macarons came out pretty well. Although the foot of the macarons did not look completely perfect the overall color and shape turned out great! Most importantly, though, was that they tasted great!

I think the only down side was that for all my hard work the recipe only yielded about 20 macarons. I would have known that had I not skimmed that part of the recipe before jumping into the bulk of the recipe.  I also skipped over the part that indicated that the difficulty level for the recipe was all the way over on the, "hard," side of the scale. Oops!   

Now, I am inspired to try making other flavors.  I think the next flavor I will try is a berry flavor with a cream-cheese butter-cream filling.